Settlement of love / 愛情の決算 / Aijo no kessan (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #255

Shin Saburi

Narasaki (Shin Saburi) has married Katsuko (Setsuko Hara), the widow of a soldier who got killed fighting alongside Narasaki in the Philippines and who left her with a son, Hiroshi. However, it was a marriage of convenience and there’s been little intimacy between the two – her husband is suffering from PTSD and suppressing his emotions, so he often comes across as a bit of a cold fish. One of Narasaki’s friends is Ohira (Toshiro Mifune), a less damaged veteran who finds himself attracted to Katsuko. Emotionally starved as she is, she finds herself falling for him despite her moral qualms...

Setsuko Hara

This Toho production was based on a story entitled Kono ju-nen (‘These 10 Years’) by Hidemi Kon (1903-84), who had himself been stationed in the Philippines during the war. It was adapted by Toshiro Ide, a notable screenwriter who worked for many of Japan’s top directors, but is perhaps best-known for his frequent collaborations with Mikio Naruse, whose films this one somewhat resembles. On this occasion, however, the director is none other than star actor Shin Saburi, whom I’ve often criticised in previous reviews for being wooden. After seeing this film, he’s definitely gone up in my estimation as, not only does he give a better performance than usual – indeed, there are times you could almost swear that he’s alive – but he also does a highly creditable job of direction. This was actually the 11^th of 14 films he directed, though I’ve yet to see any of the others.

Toshiro Mifune

Saburi also gets excellent performances out of the rest of the cast, although considering that – apart from Setsuko Hara and Toshiro Mifune – this also includes Keiju Kobayashi, Murasaki Fujima and Kaoru Yachigusa, they may not have needed too much help. Mifune might seem an unlikely romantic lead but, reunited with Hara after their successful pairing in Tokyo Sweetheart (1952), he again shows that he was quite capable of giving a good performance in a non-aggressive role. However, top-billed Hara is the real star of the show here and for her part she demonstrates a wide range of subtle expressions that her work for Ozu rarely allowed her.

Setsuko Hara

Aside from being a strong love story for grown-ups which offers no fairy-tale endings or easy solutions, the film is also an insightful portrait of post-war Japanese life, the story taking place in flashbacks over a period of 10 years from the end of the war until what was then the present day. We witness the lives of the various characters change greatly during this period, especially in economic terms – immediately after the war, they’re all living hand-to-mouth, but some prove able to adapt to new circumstances very successfully and become quite wealthy within just a few years, while others (like Narasaki) are, to their detriment, unable to let go of the past and seem bewildered by the sudden dramatic social changes. Meanwhile, the Americans are a constant background presence throughout – jeeps rumble through the streets and military jets fly over, startling everyone with their sudden noise. Such sights are common in films of the period, and this one in particular shows that the war and its aftermath continued to affect the lives of everyone in the country in all sorts of subtle ways.

A pleasant surprise, then, and a film well-worth seeking out.

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Beyond Love and Hate / 愛と憎しみの彼方へ / Ai to nikushimi no kanata e (1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #237

Toshiro Mifune

Abashiri Prison, Hokkaido. When six convicts escape one rainy night, kindly veteran screw Kubo (Takashi Shimura) is shocked to learn that one of the men was Goro Sakata, also known as Fudo (Toshiro Mifune), a model prisoner who had only six months left to serve. It transpires that, in order to get Fudo to join the escape, the ringleader (Eitaro Ozawa) had spread a lie that his wife, Masae (Mitsuko Mito), was having an affair.

Takashi Shimura

Ryo Ikebe

However, it turns out that she has indeed become very close to a young doctor, Kitahara (Ryo Ikebe), although their relationship has remained platonic thus far – but will Fudo believe this? Possibly not, considering that – after hearing of her husband’s escape – Masae has made herself look guilty as hell by fleeing to the mountains with Kitahara (her reasons for this are never fully explained, perhaps because they make no sense)…

Mitsuko Mito

Distributed by Toho, this production by the Eiga Geijutsu Kyokai (Film Art Association)* was based on a story by Kotaro Samukawa (1908-77) entitled Datsugoku-shu (‘Escaped Prisoner’); this title was no doubt not used here as the same company had only recently released an unrelated picture also starring Toshiro Mifune entitled Datsugoku (1950).

Although director Senkichi Taniguchi brought Akira Kurosawa back on board to help him with the screenplay for this one, the script proves to be little improvement on that of Taniguchi’s previous film, Devil’s Gold. One scene which seems likely to have been a Kurosawa contribution recalls his 1950 picture Scandal, painting journalists in an extremely unfavourable light as dishonourable people who basically print lies for money. Unfortunately, the film feels too long for its slender story, which seems to have been cooked up mostly as an excuse to get Taniguchi and his star Toshiro Mifune back up in the mountains again.

Eitaro Ozawa and Mifune

On a more positive note, the locations are pretty impressive here, with one scene taking place on the side of a steaming volcano, which must have been a dangerous place to shoot in. There’s also another strong score which could only be the work of Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube, while the strong cast do their best with the substandard material foisted upon them. In particular, it’s good to see Takashi Shimura in a more substantial role than usual even if he has to play a prison guard so soft he’s practically a marshmallow.

* According to Kurosawa in his book Something Like an Autobiography, he established the Film Art Association in 1948 together with Taniguchi, their mentor Kajiro Yamamoto, Mikio Naruse and producer Sojiro Motoki. 

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Jakoman and Tetsu / ジャコ万と鉄 (1949)

 

Toshiro Mifune and Kamatari Fujiwara

 

 

Eitaro Shindo

Kyubei (Eitaro Shindo, better known as Sansho the Bailiff) has a herring-fishing business in Hokkaido and is anticipating the annual arrival of the fish when his son, Tetsu (Toshiro Mifune) – presumed missing in the war – unexpectedly turns up. Tetsu is surprised to find that one of the fishermen employed by his father just lies around all day drinking saké and refusing to work. The man in question is Jakoman (Ryunosuke Tsukigata), an aggressive individual with an eye-patch whom everyone is afraid of and who has a beef with Kyubei because Kyubei stole his boat to escape from Sakhalin island when the Japanese were chased out by the Russians at the end of the war. 

 

 

Meanwhile, a woman named Yuki (Yuriko Hamada) turns up in search of Jakoman, and it emerges that she’s in love with him despite the fact that he wants nothing to do with her and treats her roughly. In the midst of all this personal drama, the herring finally appear just as the men call a strike due to low pay…

 

 

Yuriko Hamada

This Toho production* was based on a 1947 novel entitled Nishin ryoba (‘Herring Fishing Grounds’) by Tokuzo Kajino (1901-84, sometimes incorrectly listed as ‘Keizo Kajino’ or ‘Shinzo Kajino’). The screenplay was co-written by the director, Senkichi Taniguchi, and Akira Kurosawa, with whom Taniguchi frequently collaborated during this stage in their careers, and its full of characteristic Kurosawa touches. One such is when Kyubei’s son-in-law (Kurosawa favourite Kamatari Fujiwara), an apparently slow-witted clerk given to hiccups and sneezing, plays the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) and moves everyone to tears, instantly clearing up the mystery of what his wife (Nijiko Kiyokawa) sees in him. Indeed, the script seems to have been largely the work of Kurosawa, with Taniguchi making some changes when he came aboard as director, and Kurosawa apparently brought the characters of Jakoman and Tetsu to the fore for the film, whereas the source novel had Kyubei as its main protagonist.  Concerning Taniguchi, it’s hard to take him very seriously as a director given the hokum that he made in the final years of his career, while the fact that so many of his other films are basically inaccessible means that he’s likely to be forever regarded as a footnote to Kurosawa (who was said to have done much of the editing on Taniguchi’s early films). 

 

Mifune – who has to perform a spectacularly weird song and dance which I bet embarrassed him – looks great and is effortlessly likeable as Tetsu, while Ryunosuke Tsukigata is almost too convincing as the villainous Jakoman, his one eye glinting with concentrated malevolence. Tsukigata had previously played two of the opponents in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata films and has a staggering 499 credits on the Japanese Movie Database. The female lead, Yuriko Hamada, also makes a strong impression even if her feisty character is tamed at the end. (Hamada’s fate remains a mystery – she made her final film in 1957 and nobody seems to know what happened to her after that.) Excellent use of locations and a fine score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube also help to make this an enjoyable watch. The main flaw of the film is that it lacks subtlety in the way it puts across its rather obvious moral message. 

 

Yoshiko Kuga

 

In regard to Kinji Fukasaku’s 1964 remake, while it was a good idea to replace the original film’s subplot of Tetsu falling in love with a girl he sees playing the organ in a Christian church** (played by an almost unrecognisably young Yoshiko Kuga) with one in which he falls in love with the sister of a deceased comrade whose family he visits, in my opinion that was the only thing that the remake did right. Aside from that, everything that was good about the first film has evaporated in Fukasaku’s tedious version, which seems to have been a vanity project initiated by its star, Ken Takakura. Unfortunately, that’s the one which is available in a very nice limited Blu-Ray from 88 Films.

The original film was a box office success and spawned a sequel entitles Jiruba Tetsu (1950) again starring Mifune, Yuriko Hamada and Eitaro Shindo and co-written by Kurosawa but directed by Isamu Kosugi and produced by Tokyo Eiga. 

 

*Actually, although it was distributed by Toho and bears the Toho logo at the beginning, the following title card announces the film as a ’49 Years production’. It seems to be the only film credited thus, something which appears to be a result of the labour dispute that was going on at Toho at the time. Perhaps the strike called by the men in the film was partly a comment on the situation, but though the fishermen settle their differences with Kyubei, that was sadly not to be the case at the studio.

**According to ‘I Love Jakoman’ on Amazon Japan,

… it was Taniguchi's idea for Tetsu to fall in love with the church girl, and upon hearing it, Akira Kurosawa reportedly remarked, "That stinks." (Taniguchi himself said this at a Taniguchi Film Screening).

Only Kurosawa and Taniguchi are credited with the screenplay for the 1964 remake, but it’s unclear whether either had any involvement in the changes made.

Watched without subtitles

 

Yuriko Hamada

 

Sanshiro Sugata / 姿三四郎 (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #101

Yuzo Kayama

According to Stuart Galbraith IV in his book The Emperor and the Wolf, this remake of Kurosawa’s debut film (about an early exponent of judo) and its sequel was motivated by the need to turn a quick profit after the inordinately lengthy and expensive production of Red Beard. However, this may not have been the only reason, as Sanshiro Sugata Part Two (1945) not only contained some badly dated anti-Western propaganda, but was actually considered a lost film at the time this remake was produced.* 

 

Toshiro Mifune

In any case, Kurosawa chose to co-produce the film, but not direct it, instead handing the reins over to the 42-year-old Seiichiro Uchikawa, who had been an assistant to an impressive range of directors, including Ozu, Kon Ichikawa, Hiroshi Shimizu and Kenji Mizoguchi. He had found Mizoguchi extremely difficult and eventually been fired by him after a dispute. Nevertheless, Uchikawa became a director himself in 1953. By the time Sanshiro Sugata went into production, he had already directed around 30 films – often also writing the screenplays – and gradually built up a decent reputation without breaking into the A-list. Most of these earlier films are inaccessible, the exceptions being the two immediately preceding this one, namely Tange Sazen (1963) and Samurai from Nowhere (1964). The latter of the two was especially well-received and was likely the reason why Kurosawa chose him as director of this remake. Unfortunately for Uchikawa, Sanshiro Sugata would not be received as positively, at least by the critics, and seems to have damaged his career as he did not direct another feature film until 4 years later; when finally given another chance, he was reduced to making a vehicle for the pop group known as The Tempters. In my opinion, that was unfair – while the remake lacks the panache that Kurosawa himself would no doubt have brought to it, in some ways it improves on the originals, benefitting from the use of widescreen, staging at least some of the fight sequences more effectively, and employing a stronger cast, and it’s certainly far more satisfying than Kihachi Okamoto’s1977 kiddie remake. Uchikawa was also somewhat straitjacketed by the obligation to follow Kurosawa’s blueprint, as Kurosawa made only minor changes to his originals and even had Uchikawa replicate the montage of the abandoned geta. 

Yunosuke Ito

 

Bokuzen Hidari

Tsutomu Yamazaki

Kurosawa further put his stamp on the film by filling the cast with his favourite actors. Yuzo Kayama (son of Ken Uehara) had just co-starred in Red Beard, and makes a good Sanshiro, being both convincing in the fight scenes and likeable in general. Toshiro Mifune is the perfect actor to play his mentor, Shogoro Yano, and it’s great to see him kicking ass at the beginning, hurling multiple assailants into a canal. Also ideal casting is Bokuzen Hidari as the comic priest who gives Sugata a hard time, while Yunosuke Ito and Tsutomu Yamazaki make effective bad guys, and even Takashi Shimura pops up, although his part is so brief it seems a mere token gesture. In the first film, Shimura had played ju-jitsu master Hansuke Murai, the part played here by Daisuke Kato (surprisingly convincing as a formidable martial artist!). 

Takashi Shimura

 

Daisuke Ito and Eiji Okada

Not Robert Shaw, but Eiji Okada

From outside the Kurosawa stable, Eiji Okada is impressive in a dual role as two of the brothers who are Sugata’s most dangerous opponents (as karate master Tesshin, he looks remarkably like Robert Shaw). The female characters are played by less familiar names – Yumiko Konoe is the love interest, while Chisako Hara** plays Yunosuke Ito’s vengeful daughter. Konoe’s main career has been as a singer, while Hara was the wife of director Akio Jissoji, and had a long career, but mainly played supporting roles in movies. Both are fine, but Hara has the more interesting role even though it’s much smaller than Konoe’s.

Chisako Hara

Yumiko Konoe

 

The high-contrast cinematography looks good throughout, while Yojimbo composer Masaru Sato provides a score which, ironically, seems to be imitating Ennio Morricone’s music for Sergio Leone’s unacknowledged Yojimbo remake, A Fistful of Dollars. The film’s main flaw is that it feels too long at two and a half hours, but otherwise it’s hard to imagine it could have been much improved on by a director other than Uchikawa – unless, of course, it were Kurosawa himself, or perhaps Masaki Kobayashi. On the evidence of the film alone, it’s hard to see why it should have been a career-killer for Uchikawa, although it’s entirely possible there are additional unknown factors which account for the sudden 4-year gap in his film career after this was released. Although this film has been largely ignored by critics, its current of rating of 7.4 on IMDb strongly suggests that most people who have seen it enjoyed it, and I would certainly encourage anyone interested to check it out if you have the chance.

 

*A print was subsequently discovered in Russia. 

**Chisako Hara is listed as two separate people on IMDb.

All About Marriage / 結婚のすべて / Kekkon no subete (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #51

Michiyo Aratama and Izumi Yukimura

Kihachi Okamoto’s directorial debut is a light comedy which begins with a shot of a young couple kissing in a boat on a beach before the camera pulls back to reveal it’s merely a scene being shot for a movie. For the next few minutes, the film continues in faux-documentary style with some narration by an uncredited Keiju Kobayashi before settling down to focus on the main story. It’s a tale of two contrasting sisters – Yasuko (Izumi Yukimura), a very modern young woman who has fully embraced the new Westernised culture of post-war Japan, and Keiko (Michiyo Aratama), her older sister, who is always seen in Japanese dress and represents more traditional and conservative values. However, Michiyo is married to Saburo (Ken Uehara), a staid university professor who takes her somewhat for granted, as a result of which she indulges in a flirtation with Koga (Tatsuya Mihashi), the editor of a woman’s magazine. Meanwhile, Yasuko falls for a student, Hiroshi (Shinji Yamada), before discovering that he’s two-timing her with carefree young hedonist Mariko (Reiko Dan). Disillusioned, she finally takes up instead with Akira (Tatsuya Nakadai), a young man who works for her father’s company and of whom her father approves as a potential future husband.

Ken Uehara

Although handed such routine material for his first assignment as director, Okamoto invests it with considerable wit and invention along the way and certainly puts his unique stamp upon it, filling out the supporting cast with a variety of eccentric characters, several of whom verge on caricature. At times, he seems to intend a satire of a consumerist society in thrall to America and embracing everything from chewing gum to bad Elvis pastiches. In any case, his film is not only an enjoyable entertainment, but an interesting cultural artefact and I’d love to see it again with subtitles (there’s a lot of dialogue).

Toshiro Mifune

 

 

Among the colourful cast, Toshiro Mifune appears for a few seconds in an uncredited cameo as an acting teacher, while Tatsuya Nakadai’s part is larger but still brief – he first appears 52 minutes in and then is not seen again until the final couple of minutes. Pre-Human Condition, Nakadai was not yet a major star, but must have gained some popularity in the wake of his role for Masaki Kobayashi in Black River (1957) as he’s featured quite prominently in the trailer. It’s Reiko Dan who steals the show, though – given an attention-grabbing entrance dancing down the street to a rock and roll tune, she’s vivacity on legs. 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai and Izumi Yukimura

 

 

 

Reiko Dan

 

Watched without subtitles. 

 

You may also enjoy reading Robin Gatto’s review.  

DVD at Amazon Japan